Strategic Intent Undermines Creative Outcomes: Evidence from a Randomised Control Trial

Established firms formulate strategies to gain competitive advantage, to maximise their rent or to innovate to solve problems. This study develops a framework for exploring the implications of these strategic intents for creativity and value creation. The sample of the randomised control trial in this study included 32 strategic decision makers from four established companies that generated 128 decisions for analysis by playing a negotiation game. All subjects received 1 day of prior training in negotiation skills. Those in the control group were permitted to follow their default instincts during the trial. We found that actors who were guided by the intent of competitive advantage tended to be non-explorative about other problems. Actors who were guided by the intent of maximising rent tended to be exploitative or negatively creative. Actors who were guided by the intent of problem discovery found the most non-obvious and creative solutions leading to greater value creation than other intents. The results were consistent with the prediction of our framework—that the default strategic decision-making intent would tend to be the one that is closest to maximising rent or securing competitive advantage, leads to the exploitation of other players and neutralises total value creation.